Zionism

Civil religion in its various facets is deeply rooted in American culture. Outside of a few exceptions, politicians and believers alike, with varying degrees of comfort, find civil religion and the public expression of religious faith to be acceptable and propitious points of departure for the presentation of self in everyday life.

That being the case, it should not surprise that President Obama asked to pray with “Mr. Evangelical” Billy Graham, and that Graham and his son Franklin did so. A full report here. I am also not surprised that Barack, a convert to the Christian faith, prayed on behalf of Graham in that same context. The Obama family’s faith was nurtured for many years at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a congregation I have worshipped with on several occasions. The congregation does not believe in raising up passive believers. Everyone is expected to be able to engage in extemporaneous prayer, to have a devotional life consisting of daily reading of the Bible, and to show fruits of repentance in their daily life.

Logos Bible
Software is on a rampage. At the rate of 3,439 pages a minute,1 the
company is putting the corpus of English-language scholarship on the Bible into
searchable, electronic format and thereby enhancing its usefulness several
fold. The pre-publication
price for a Libronixed set of seven hefty tomes (2,638 pages) of Hebrew Bible / OT scholarship available in
hard copy from Continuum/T&T Clark/ Sheffield Academic Press is impossible
to beat: $109.95. Why is this set, dubbed the Hebrew Studies Collection,
of particular interest?

Absence of Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) is a
magnificent addition to the collection of gifts Marilynne Robinson has bequeathed
upon the reading world. The volume is what would be called in Italian un’impietosa
disanima, a merciless analysis, of scientism of the last two hundred years.
She hangs up to dry one great thinker after another – even a biblical scholar, James
Kugel, but more importantly, people like Herbert Spencer, Auguste Comte, Steven
Pinker, E. O. Wilson, and Sigmund Freud.

The site of Matthew Anstey, one of the best young
scholars working along the interface of linguistics and ancient Hebrew, has a
new address: go here for a rich
bibliography and transliterated biblical text according to rigorous linguistic
standards.

Back in the days when people read their
Bibles, the Pentecostal blessing was understood by Pentecostals in light of the
breadth and depth of all of Acts 2, including verses 17-21 and 42-47. Pentecostals felt themselves convicted by the entire chapter, as opposed to being merely validated by the fact that the birth of the ecclesia of Christ was accompanied by speaking in tongues.

More often than one
might imagine, Pentecostals used to have a heart for racial reconciliation, women in
ministry, a critique of war, and a sense of responsibility for the wellbeing of
planet earth. The true inventor of Earth Day was a Pentecostal named John
McConnell, not Senator Gaylord Nelson (the latter took the idea over for his
own ends).

McConnell embodies much of what has made Pentecostalism one of the most
potent and positive movements of regeneration the world has ever seen. At its best, to this day, Pentecostalism is John McConnell, not Benny and Suzanne Hinn. For the
whole delightful story, go here. HT: Rick
Wadholm

The title of this post is a play on Elisabeth’s
greeting of Mary in Luke 1:42. My wife Paola has teased me with this phrase the last few days, since we have two students from Italy as house-guests, and I
am currently outnumbered five to 1 at the dinner table.

What are you talking about, you may ask? So
far, what I have written is clear as mud in English. It makes perfect sense in
Italian, because, like many of the world’s languages, Italian is a gendered
language. “Blessed are you among women,” a straightforward translation of this
post’s title in English, misses the point. As is true more often than
translators like to admit, the only way to bring out the sense of “Beato tu tra
le donne” is by paraphrase, something like, “Beatific are you, a male, among all these women.”

Are you
still trying to understand the Bible by means of a translation? It’s a waste of
time. You are missing half if not more of the splendid details of the text. Gender
modulations are just one example. Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek are rich in them.

Below the fold, pictures of four of the five women who are currently keeping me in high spirits. La piccola is my daughter
Anna. La mora is my daughter Elisabetta.

In the latest issue of JHS, there is a fine article
by Yael Shemesh entitled "'And Many Beasts' (Jonah 4:11): The Function and Status of Animals in the Book of Jonah." Her main thesis: the Hebrew Bible and the book of Jonah in particular think of God as full of compassion for animals no less than human
beings. On this score, she argues, Rashi, Aquinas, and Descartes, and the modern
anthropocentric worldview tout court, represent a huge step backward with
respect to the Hebrew Bible. Indifference to and mistreatment of animals in post-biblical teaching has been countenanced again and again. Shemesh's arguments dovetail with those of Ellen Davis (Scripture, Culture, and
Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible). Davis also suggests that the
modern world has much to learn from the Hebrew Bible in the realm of ethics,
and in particular, as far as an ecologically sensitive ethics is concerned.

Believing is KnowingComments on things like prophecy, predestination, and reward and punishment from an orthodox Jewish perspective, by David Guttmann

Ben Byerly's Blogthoughts on the Bible, Africa, Kenya, aid, and social justice, by Ben Byerly, a PhD candidate at Africa International University (AIU), in Nairobi, Kenya working on “The Hopes of Israel and the Ends of Acts” (Luke’s narrative defense of Paul to Diaspora Judeans in Acts 16-20)

C. OrthodoxyChristian, Contemporary, Conscientious… or Just Confused, by Ken Brown, a very thoughtful blog (archive). Ken is currently a Dr. Theol. student at Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, part of The Sofja-Kovalevskaja Research Group studying early Jewish Monotheism. His dissertation will focus on the presentation of God in Job.

Catholic Biblesa thoughtful blog about Bible translations by Timothy, who has a degree in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome (Angelicum) and teaches theology in a Catholic high school in Michigan

Chrisendomirreverent blog with a focus on the New Testament, by Chris Tilling, New Testament Tutor for St Mellitus College and St Paul's Theological Centre, London

Claude Mariottinia perspective on the Old Testament and current events by a professor of Old Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Chicagoland, Illinois

Codex: Biblical Studies Blogspotby Tyler Williams, a scholar of the Hebrew Bible and cognate literature, now Assistant Professor of Theology at The King's University College in Edmonton, Alberta (archive)

Colours of Scripturereflections on theology, philosophy, and literature, by Benjamin Smith, afflicted with scriptural synaesthesia, and located in London, England

ComplegalitarianA team blog that discusses right ways and wrong ways Scripture might help in the social construction of gender (old archive only; more recent archive, unfortunately, no longer publicly available)

Connected Christianitya place to explore what it might be like if Christians finally got the head, heart, and hands of their faith re-connected (archive)

Conversational TheologySmart and delightful comment by Ros Clarke, a Ph.D. student at the University of the Highlands and Islands, at the (virtual) Highland Theological College (archive)

Daily HebrewFor students of biblical Hebrew and the ancient Near East, by Chip Hardy, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago

Daniel O. McClellana fine blog by the same, who is pursuing a master of arts degree in biblical studies at Trinity Western University just outside of Vancouver, BC.

Davar AkherLooking for alternative explanations: comments on things Jewish and beyond, by Simon Holloway, a PhD student in Classical Hebrew and Biblical Studies at The University of Sydney, Australia

Evedyahuexcellent comment by Cristian Rata, Lecturer in Old Testament of Torch Trinity Graduate School of Theology, Seoul, Korea

Exegetica Digitadiscussion of Logos high-end syntax and discourse tools – running searches, providing the downloads (search files) and talking about what can be done and why it might matter for exegesis, by Mike Heiser

Law, Prophets, and Writingsthoughtful blogging by William R. (Rusty) Osborne, Assistant Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies as College of the Ozarks and managing editor for Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament

Lingamishdelightful fare by David Ker, Bible translator, who also lingalilngas.

old testament passionGreat stuff from Anthony Loke, a Methodist pastor and Old Testament lecturer in the Seminari Theoloji, Malaysia

Old Testament Pseudepigrapha BlogA weblog created for a course on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, by James Davila (archive)

On the Main LineMississippi Fred MacDowell's musings on Hebraica and Judaica. With a name like that you can't go wrong.

p.ost an evangelical theology for the age to comeseeking to retell the biblical story in the difficult transition from the centre to the margins following the collapse of Western Christendom, by Andrew Perriman, independent New Testament scholar, currently located in Dubai

PaleoJudaicaby James Davila, professor of Early Jewish Studies at the University of St. Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland. Judaism and the Bible in the news; tidbits about ancient Judaism and its context

Serving the Wordincisive comment on the Hebrew Bible and related ancient matters, with special attention to problems of philology and linguistic anthropology, by Seth L. Sanders, Assistant Professor in the Religion Department of Trinity College, Hartford, CT

Targumanon biblical and rabbinic literature, Christian theology, gadgetry, photography, and the odd comic, by Christian Brady, associate professor of ancient Hebrew and Jewish literature and dean of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State

The Biblia Hebraica Bloga blog about Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the history of the Ancient Near East and the classical world, Syro-Palestinian archaeology, early Judaism, early Christianity, New Testament interpretation, English Bible translations, biblical theology, religion and culture, philosophy, science fiction, and anything else relevant to the study of the Bible, by Douglas Magnum, PhD candidate, University of the Free State, South Africa

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Ancient Hebrew Poetry is a weblog of John F. Hobbins. Opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of his
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